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Month / September 2016

I hate “best for the kids” arguments, not because it’s a horrible concept (obviously not), but because these arguments are often used in cases where a) it’s a judgment call with good arguments on both sides, and b) the adults are just going to do whatever they want anyway. There is always a way to rationalize these decisions as being “best for the kids,” no matter what. And if you’re just gonna do whatever you want, then why bring your kids into it?

Take divorce. I’ve known people who used to pray every night that their parents would split up, and I know people who were blindsided and traumatized by their parents’ divorce. And there are even more ambiguous cases where the kid agrees that divorce is for the best, but is still negatively affected by it. Not to mention cases where one kid is not really affected by their parents’ divorce, while their sibling is broken by it. So what is “best for the kids” in one particular situation? And how do you know?

Or take all the competing parenting philosophies. Attachment, holistic, French style, tiger mom, free range, I don’t even know what they all are. Whatever philosophy you go with must be described as being a) best for the kids and b) just my personal preference for my family, it may not be right for you, no judgment, blah blah blah. The result is a mishmash of competing norms and conflicting directives, not no judgment but lots of it. How could somebody formula feed/breastfeed so long/overschedule/fail to enrich/spank/not spank/etc.? They must not really care because they’re not doing it this way, and this way is what’s best for kids.

I have no high horse to mount when I criticize other people’s grammar. There is no grammatical sin I have not committed, usually in the middle of a cover letter or some other important document. So this isn’t an indictment. “I am not commenting, merely pointing to a fact,” as Orwell might have said.

As part of my research into the recent past, I’ve visited a lot of old archived webpages. Believe it or not, people’s spelling and grammar was better back then than it is now. People writing on the internet, anyway. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s noticeably better on average.

In 2016, I see a lot of malaprops (or malapropisms), even in news articles on mainstream websites. It’s become especially noticeable to me in the last year or so. Here are some examples off the top of my head:

Writing “of” instead of “have,” e.g. “I would of called him, but I forgot.” This is exceedingly common now.

I’m sure you can find a page from 2003 that has one or more of these malaprops on it––but they are much more common today, even on mainstream news and commentary websites.

What’s going on here? Am I imagining this trend? Has anyone done a high-level analysis of grammar on the internet and how it changes over time? I’d appreciate any linguist who could give me insight into what’s happening (or not happening) in this case.